In the 1960s numerous cities in the United States experienced violent, race-related civil disturbances. Although social scientists have long studied the causes of the riots, the consequences have received much less attention. This paper examines census data from 1950 to 1980 to measure the...

African-Americans entered the post-Civil War era with extremely low levels of exposure to schooling. Relying primarily on micro-level census data, we describe racial differences in literacy rates, school attendance, years of educational attainment, age-in-grade distributions, spending per pupil,...

This essay, written in honor of the economic historian Robert Higgs, surveys the economic history of African Americans from the end of slavery to the present day. This history, I argue, was largely one of convergence. However, convergence was not continuous but, rather, was punctuated by...

This paper examine long-run trends in racial differences in home ownership rate and in the value of owner-occupied housing. In contrast to our previous work, we include female-headed households in the analysis. This extension is important, because female-headed households are less likely to own...

Between 1964 and 1971, hundreds of riots erupted in American cities, resulting in large numbers of injuries, deaths, and arrests, as well as in considerable property damage that was concentrated in predominantly black neighborhoods. There have been few studies of a systematic, econometric nature...

Using unpublished data contained in samples from the manuscripts of the 1870 and 1880 censuses of manufactures, we examine the extent and correlates of part-year manufacturing during the late nineteenth century. These data are the earliest comprehensive estimates available and, while the typical...

We use data from the manuscript censuses of manufacturing for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 to study the dispersion of average monthly wages across establishments. We find a marked increased in wage inequality over the period, an increase that cannot be explained by biases in the data or changes in...

This paper uses census IPUMS data to analyze trends in racial differences in home ownership and housing values and to examine the connection between residential segregation and the housing status of blacks relative to whites. A widening in the ownership gap between 1940 and 1960 is explained...

We use data from the manuscript census of manufacturing to estimate the effects of the length of the working day on output and wages. We find that the elasticity of output with respect to daily hours was positive but less than one - that is, there were diminishing returns to increases in hours....

This paper begins by documenting racial convergence in the value of owner-occupied housing from 1940 to 1990. Most of this convergence occurred before 1970, as black and white home owners became more similar in terms of household and housing characteristics that were positively correlated with...